46 . ' . *'" .:? " > k <- ... ... .. -t : .. , .,.$ .<IIi> 33, '" *' / .. f ,/ t ' ..; , '"""", , YV ./ .:. , ! '" , , . - i <f' /.. . < ;/ ;. '- :t 1 ,'\<' -.. .. :..4' , . , '.4, <$- . t < . ,þ '" ';; \t ' t , ; \ :i ^ j \ -$:-. ",-; ..........; J <,;. -$" ':: ;- ., ^t : f L-' \ { ^ ". "..,! .:'. ' 7f, } .: iij;,,:"j 1, . '.. ,./.I: t 1-,,! -4 -' ' ?;i, ;' . . -t . :-: , ,< i t ': .:'. "C:: :. . -i^ , :: t:. :. . . ..":;: (.0.. t., u .' 1 '$1 .' i , :Á- * The Mandarin in Hong Kong: Where luxury lías a gentle touch and a warm smile. The best hotels in the world boast a legion of people to look after you, splendid food and superb decor. The Mandarin in Hong Kong can give you something more. Here, in this gleaming, teeming city where ancient traditions dwell beside modern sciences, we call that something 'Bun chi yu K wai'. It means simply, the feeling of returning home. The gentle smiling people of The Mandarin have created this feeling. We would like you to experience it for yourself. The aQ. c!i'J General Manager: Peter Stafford. Co-operating Member Inter-Continental Hotels Cables: Mandarin Hong Kong. Telex: HX3653. For reservations contact your nearest Inter-Continental Hotel reservations office, or American Express Space Bank. M044E , " ,. fore Diem took power Some of these ^ people were killed on arrest; others were beaten and tortured; still others were held for indefinite periods under inhuman conditions for the purpose of extorting money from them or con- fiscating their land. In certain areas, whole hamlets were subjected to such treatment. What most surprised the American resedrchers was that few of these arrests were eVer made in Saigon or in any of the larger cities, for this "<0 fact indicated that Diem did not direct- ly order them. In most cases, the officials seemed to have act- ed on their own initiative and for their own personal or sec- tarIan interests. Some of the of- ficials were, after all, former colonial functionarie" with blood scores to settle agaInst the Vietminh. Others were former village notables and landlords who had been dnven from their villages by the Vietminh during the war. Some of them were Catholics fighting old sectarian battles, and still · others were adventurers who joined the new administration in order to make their fortunes. By issuing the anti-trea- son laws, Diem had, in other words, opened a Pandora's box of violence. Even if Diem had understood that the terror campaign worked against the long-term interests of his government, he could have done nothing to stop it. Apart from those people who could use his administration to their own private advantage, he had little support in the coun try. The anti- Vietminh campaign was only one manifestation of the anarchy within the administration and the Army. Almost all the American report- ers who came to Saigon in 1961-62 had tales to tell of Army officers gain- ing promotions through bribery or po- litical infi uence, of generals running illicit traffic in rice or opium, of intelli- gence officers refusing to divulge in- formation or lying to conceal a job undone, of officers stealing their men's pay, and of soldiers treating the peasants like the members of a conquered race. One experienced reporter wrote, "Of the thousands of Vietnamese officials I have known, I can think of none who does not more or less hold the Viet- namese people in contempt." There were exceptions, of course, but they remained exceptions. On the whole, the behavIor of the officials had a curious uniformity to it Their misdeeds formed a pattern that transcended the region or social class from which they came. From the tales of the Diem regime as told by the villagers, it would seem that the history of the South was but the his- JULY 8, I 9 7 2, tory of one vIllage repeated over and over agaIn. The story as told by villagers throughout the country had its stock characters: the government-appointed village chief; the "haughty" and "arro- gant" official who took bribes from the local landlords and forced the vil- lagers to work for him; the village security officer-a relative, perhaps, of the district chief-who llsed his posi- tion to take revenge on old enemies or to eÀtort mone) from the villagers; the government soldiers who, like juvenIle delinquents, drank too much, stole food, and raped the village girls; the village self-defense guards who hud- dled in their earthwork forts each night and fled when the National Liheration Front came in force to the village; the district and provin- cial officials who, like Kafka's bureau- crats, seemed to inhabit a world impos- sibl} remote from the village. Finally) there were the villagers themselves, who complained so little that for years the Americans thought the insurgency would find no root among them. And there was a denouement to the story shocking to Amencans of the period: when the Front cadres moved into the village and assassinated one or two of the government officials, the villagers reacted with enthusiasm or indifference. Dr. Fishel and his colleagues con- tended that the Diem regime was not the worst government in Asia, and possibly it was not. But the Vietnamese did not make such comparisons. The fact is that the failings of the Diemist officIals arose not out of any one politi- cal system but out of the depths of the society. N go Dinh Diem did not create these failings; on the other hand, he could do nothing about them. He could not even analyze them, for although the} were not "natural" or traditional, they stemmed from the disintegration of the old society, from a process that he himself did not recognize And it was this disIntegration, rather than the larger political or regional divisions, that defeated him. As always, the crux of the matter was the village, the essential commu- nity of Vietnam. Traditionally, the vil- Llges stood almost isolated, huhs in the wheels of their paddy fields, sur- viving civil war upon civil war, pro- tecting the cycle of the rice and the \\1 ay of the ancestors. But with the coming of the French the vIllages suc- cumbed-first to the colonial bureau- crats, then to the merchants, then to the soldiers. Overwhelmed by the new